Gender ideology is still a danger to children
Transgender rights advocates have redefined safeguarding to mean its opposite
Three stories concerning so-called ‘transgender children’ have hit the headlines this week.
First came the devastating news that an 18-year-old from Tumbler Ridge, a small town in Canada, had shot and killed his mother and his brother, before moving to the local school where he slaughtered a female teacher, three girls and two boys. The murderer, named as Jesse Van Rootselaar, then turned the gun on himself.
When news of this horrific incident first broke, the shooter was referred to as ‘a female in a dress’. A few hours later, reporters switched to ‘a gun person’. The Canadian police chief later confirmed that Van Rootselaar had been ‘born male but identified as female’. While some newspapers then switched to using male pronouns, others stuck rigidly to ‘the suspect’, ‘the shooter’ or, worse, described the killer as ‘she’. In other words, even as 8 people lay dead and 25 others remained seriously ill, major broadcasting corporations, including CBC in Canada, chose to elevate the feelings of a dead male murderer above providing a true and accurate account of what had happened.
Deceitful reporting prevents us from arriving at a proper analysis of why eight people lost their lives and how such a situation can be prevented in the future. Indeed, questions need to be asked about any possible connection between transgender ideology and Van Rootselaar’s disturbed mental state. When we tell young children that they can change sex, and they see the entire world bend to their will, we give them a huge sense of self-importance but ultimately sell them a lie. Reports suggest that the 6-foot Van Rootselaar didn’t just want to be female but to be a ‘petite’ woman.
Clearly, he was never going to be either of those things. Yet it seems that many - no doubt well-meaning - people were prepared to feed his delusions and change their own language and behaviour to accommodate his self-image. At some point, reality must have dawned on the 18-year-old, and it is not impossible that he may have felt some anger and confusion at having his delusion shattered. Of course, this does not excuse Van Rootselaar’s murderous actions. However, if we continue to lie about his sex after his death, we cannot even ask these questions and risk more children becoming victims of transgender killers.
The second story I want to look at concerns the NHS’s decision to conduct a clinical trial to assess the effectiveness of puberty blockers. Over 200 children who believe they are transgender will participate in the investigation, which has been backed by Health Secretary Wes Streeting. This is shocking in and of itself. To state the obvious: no child has been born in the wrong body and puberty is a natural life-stage, not an illness that needs to be ‘blocked’. Children are not human guinea pigs; they will struggle to understand the biological implications of preventing puberty and cannot consent to the possibility of future infertility or contemplate that they may, one day, change their mind about their ‘gender identity’.
If this wasn’t bad enough, what’s been revealed this week is that the children taking part in the trial will be rewarded with gift vouchers worth up to £500 for completing psychometric tests. They will receive £30 for each of the 15 cognitive assessments they complete, and £15 for each of the three MRI scans they undertake, over the two years of the trial. This is grossly irresponsible. Not only does it incentivise participation in the trial - with all the health risks that this poses - but, worse, it works to keep children who begin the process within the system for the full two-years even if they begin to have doubts. To many adults, £30 might seem a trivial amount, but to 12-year-olds, this is enough to ignore warnings and endure discomfort.
Finally, we have long-awaited government guidance to schools on dealing with children who consider themselves to be transgender. Some of it is sensible. Children should only ever be able to use the toilets, changing rooms and dormitories appropriate for their sex. What’s shocking is that for many years, this has NOT been the case.
The guidance also recommends that parents should be informed if their child expresses a desire to ‘socially transition’ - in other words, to change their name, pronouns and wear uniform associated with the opposite sex. Good. However, there is a caveat. Schools are not obliged to do this in every instance, only ‘in the vast majority of cases’. If teachers are concerned that a pupil may be at risk from their parents discovering they wish to change gender, then they do not have to divulge anything. Schools and children can collude to keep parents in the dark.
Again, there seems to be a very basic failure to understand child psychology. Any child determined to get what they want, and seeking to avoid parents who might - for very good reason - stand in their way, will soon learn to say they are at risk of ‘harm’ if their parents are told what is going on. And teachers who are transgender activists are likely to see any failure to affirm a child’s identity as an act of harm, even if parents have very good reasons for challenging their child’s beliefs.
If teachers truly believe a child is at risk at home, they should approach the police and social services, not promise to keep secrets. The danger is that teachers who are transgender activists can, quite legitimately, support children to socially transition by using talk of ‘safeguarding’ to prevent parents from acting in their own child’s best interests.
Thanks to brave feminist campaigners, there has been considerable pushback to gender ideology over the past few years. However, adults are still lying to children and telling them it is possible to change sex. Transgender activists do not understand child safeguarding to mean shielding them from unscientific ideas and powerful drugs and encouraging them to trust their parents. Instead, activists are reinterpreting safeguarding to mean putting children at risk.